Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve marks the return of John Raffles to The Shrubs and turns the Bulstrode home into a space of concealment and immediate danger. The date matters not as a festive observance but as the occasion when Nicholas Bulstrode’s effort to contain a returning witness exposes the strain of his secrecy to his wife.

The Return to The Shrubs

Bulstrode had been certain that Raffles would come back to Middlemarch unless he was dead, and on Christmas Eve that expectation was fulfilled. Raffles appeared at The Shrubs, where Bulstrode received him and tried to prevent him from communicating with the rest of the family. The visit brought into the house a man whose presence threatened to connect Bulstrode’s prosperous respectability with the concealed past that Raffles knew.

A Night of Containment

Raffles insisted on remaining in the house. Faced with the choice between keeping him there and risking his going into town, Bulstrode judged that the first course was less dangerous. He kept Raffles in his own room for the evening and saw him to bed, attempting to control both the visitor and the circumstances of his exposure. Yet Raffles was unusually difficult to manage: his restless mental state and habitual intemperance meant that he quickly shook off the effect of anything said to him.

Raffles made a noisy show of joking about Bulstrode’s discomfort, presenting his presence as an opportunity for Bulstrode to entertain someone who had once served him and had not received all his earnings. Beneath the joking lay a calculated attempt to extract a larger payment in exchange for release from renewed pressure. Bulstrode, however, suffered more intensely than Raffles understood.

Secrecy Inside the Household

To explain Raffles’s presence, Bulstrode told Mrs. Bulstrode that he was caring for a wretched man who might otherwise harm himself. He implied a family connection and signs of mental alienation, and said that he would drive Raffles away the following morning. These hints were intended to justify his keeping the visitor isolated, with no one but himself entering the room even to bring food or drink.

The arrangement did not restore Bulstrode’s composure. He feared that Raffles’s loud, plain references to past events might be overheard, and was particularly anxious that Mrs. Bulstrode might listen at the door. Christmas Eve therefore becomes a moment when the household’s ordinary privacy is threatened from within: Bulstrode can restrict access to Raffles, but cannot be certain that the secret will remain unheard.